Not Losing Oneself
“Haneul (Heaven) and Tang (Earth) make oneness in Saram (Man).
That is all.”
Man
(Saram) exists between Heaven (Haneul) and Earth (Tang). Heaven and Earth
derive their existence from man as they are divided from the one entirety that
is Man.
TAEKWONDO
is not exceptional in that it is also composed of these three materials of
Heaven, Earth, and Man (together known as the Samjae 삼재[三才]).[1]
It is important that you should always maintain yourself as you are without
being led into a biased extremity in the battle against your opponent. This is
the third principle called “the way of Saram”. Some have taught that this
involves knowing oneself, or keeping to one’s own sphere, or as a sort of
golden mean. To express it differently, the way of Saram in Taekwondo is to
return immediately to a settled pose, which is the core of each of your
motions. This settled core is in perfect balance despite the endless changes
and motions around it.
You,
as a Taekwondo-Een who follows the way of Saram, should always keep yourself
sufficiently trained and under an intense regimen of practice such that you
never lose your way at any moment of Kyorugi.[2]
It should be as a sort of personal realm in which you live. Within that realm
you can be confident in your control over everything, and thus you will never
lose predominance over others since you include others within your realm. By
turn, if you broaden the possibility of this infinite position-keeping, your
predominance will vanish and you will attain everything, relying solely upon
your opponent's motion. This is possible because only after you first know the
existence of your “I” can you then understand also the non-existence of the
“I”. It is essential for life that every living thing manage all of its
processes and activities with a view towards self-preservation. Man is a life,
and therefore, the way of Saram is naturally closest to the figure of life among
the three elements of Samjae.
A
plant begins as a seed, takes root, sprouts stems and leaves, puts forth
flowers which become fruit that contain again the essential seeds of life. All
of these changes occur because each stage, i.e. the seedling, roots, the mature
tree, are nothing but a plant breathing together with the whole of nature from
the deepest root to the tips of its many leaves. Otherwise, a seed would die as
a mere crumb and a mature tree would be nothing more than a lump of wood.
Through
all of these temporal processes the core, the essence, is the state of “being a
plant”, and spatially this core is the earth where it is rooted. Strength and
weakness can only occur in being alive, and the strength is no different from
life’s growth. This is the form of the change of everything. The principle of
Taekwondo is same as that of Nature.
The
core, as it applies to the way of Saram (Man), means your own perfect pose
which allows the most possibilities of adapting to each situation. It is the true
figure of each Taekwondo-Een. You should return to your core naturally and
immediately following each movement. This implies that you never actually leave
your core, but just extend yourself to various figures before contracting back.
Since
this core is each man’s figure in practicing Taekwondo it is not at all fixed,
but rather is determined by the relation of you to your opponent's motions,
weapons, distance, and so forth. This is due to the fact that you undergo
endless change in nature. Since, however, this principle is no more than an
aspect of Taekwondo and everybody cannot but follow its correct principle it is
fixed at the abstract level.
The
structure of this change lies in the fact that everything that man conceives
changes. Let us take a toy top for example. Since the toy top will be troubled
in its spinning with its swaying core when it spins, the core that regulates
each change should be stable and firm. Once its core is stable and firm it can
spin on any surface and stand upright in any situation.
Just
as each part of the toy top turns swiftly back towards its core, your motion
should turn swiftly back towards your core, i.e. to your balanced pose and
position. Only the core of change can naturally link one change to another.
Accordingly, whenever you kick you should immediately drop your foot back to
its original pose, which makes the next skilled movement possible swiftly and
naturally. This applies equally to the techniques of the hands.
[1] “Samjae” is the Korean term referring
to the three elements of Haneul (Heaven), Tang (Earth), and Saram (Man). These
three elements are not concrete things but abstract entities representing
metaphysical concepts.
[2] To put it most simply, Kyorugi means
sparring. But Koreans can also refer to life or death combat by the word
Kyorugi. Thus the central meaning of Kyorugi is close to sparring, but it can
be more broadly nuanced to life or death struggle.
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